On Oct. 4, Facebook announced they had hit 1 billion users, a milestone that was seemingly inevitable given their growth rate over the last few years.

Facebook announced this with little fanfare or fuss, opting for a short press release from Mark Zuckerberg as well as a stop off on the “Today” show. Other than that, most people didn’t hear much about it.

This is significant for two reasons.

First, connecting 1 billion people on this planet via a shared experience is amazing beyond words. We’re talking about sharing a cultural similarity across 1 billion other people. Never in human history have we been as globally connected as we are today, and Facebook, while not the cause of this, is the most impressive example of the phenomenon.

Stepping away from the excitement, however, we can see the second reason it is significant. The way Facebook handled this milestone was an absolute flop. There were no streamers or confetti, no cheering from the streets, no reinforcing the cultural impact they had made. It was a whisper, and nobody cared.

Calling it a flop is not just my opinion. Facebook’s stock price closed that day with no significant change, up or down. What could have been a giant, earth-shattering event wound up being a side note on a few news programs. If it were me, I’d fire the marketing team.

Of course, you have to consider that maybe this was on purpose. Facebook didn’t get to 1 billion people because they were managed by morons. Some of the smartest people in the world work there, so maybe they simply elected to play it low key because they knew that basing celebrations on user-base milestones isn’t sustainable at their current size.

Therein lies the problem. Facebook’s value has always been fueled by its user count. The more people they get, the more ads they serve, the more money they were worth. It was a simple formula. When the stock doesn’t move for more users, the formula is broken and a question mark appears. How do we make more money if it’s not by growing our bread and butter — serving ads to more and more users?

The 1 billion person milestone was anticlimactic partly because of Mark Zuckerberg himself. That’s just his personality, it seems. He’s much more interested in the engineering and experiential aspects of Facebook, not necessarily the hype or PR he can generate.

But with Wall Street unimpressed with that mentality, it’s only a matter of time before he has to accept the new game he’s playing. The post one-billion-user Facebook is a different landscape to navigate, and Zuck will need to throw out his old maps if he hopes to navigate it safely.

As critical as I may seem, I really do applaud the 1-billion-user achievement. I’m simply in awe of the fact that I am on the same social network with such a vast number of people across the world. Facebook’s greatest talent since the beginning has been its ability to get users, and this is a testament to that talent. But to paraphrase the famous line from the movie: You know what’s cooler than a billion users? Two billion users!

Jesse Bushkar is the CEO of Sysconn New Media Inc. He can be contacted at 912-356-9920 or jesse@sysconn.com.